Is the SEC a 2nd rate conference? Lets look at the numbers

 

 You may have heard Rick Pitino call the SEC a 2nd rate conference compared to the Big East. This in return caused many UK fans to show their discontent, especially since it came from Pitino.

There is no doubt the Big East has received more publicity and has received a significant more at large bigs than any other conference including the SEC. Of course they do have 16 teams in their conferences; no other conference has more than 12. Common sense tells us, if you have more major schools in your conference, than you will in return have more talent if you were going to field an “all-star” team for example.

The most obvious defense against the Big East being well “Big” in talent and not just numbers is their recent choking in the tournament. If you didn’t see the numbers repeated over and over or Charles Barkley letting the world know how overrated the Big East is, while Pitino just sat by than you missed some funny moments.
First off, how in the world did the Big East get so many bids when so many of them proved to not be so hot against non Big East opponents (other then of course UCONN)?

They got the bids because of high strength of schedule (sos) and rpi. The theory behind using these statistics and not just pure win/loss records is the fact that just because you are a mid major who went 25-5 with all wins against cupcakes, does not make you better than a 20-10 team who was tested against the best.

Sounds like a great theory but there is a loop hole and the Big East has seemed to exploit this in recent years. The media and coaches pre-season and pre conference polls have a major impact on who is selected when it comes to the Big East.

If “in theory” certain teams were given inflated high rankings because of the name on the front of their jersey instead of what is on the back of the jersey, they will be later considered “overrated.”

Typically overrated teams work themselves out. They will throughout the season prove to be overrated and will fall out of the top 25. There have been multiple teams in the past ranked in the top 10 preseason and find themselves not even making the Big Dance. So the pre-season over rated rankings were not considered a big deal…until what the Big East has done lately.

For example, this past year the AP poll in week 8 had five Big EAST schools ranked in the top ten: Pitt, UCONN, Syracuse, Nova and Georgetown. Notre Dame was ranked in 15th, Louisville 22nd. So that is seven Big East schools in the top 25.

With the NCAA tournament not just being the top 25, looking at those who received votes but not in the top 25 would be considered at large bids or at the very least on the bubble. Two other Big East schools fell into this category: West Virginia and Cincinnati. So we are looking at nine teams at this point up for consideration for tournament going into conference play.

The reason it is important to look at the rankings around the end of December/early January is this is roughly when Big East conference play begins. If you want a bunch of schools in the same conference to make the Big Dance, this is the point you want as much inflated rankings for these programs as you can.

After they get into conference play, with a bunch of teams with high rankings battling each other, your end result is high rpi’s and sos’. The end of the season rpi and sos has a lot to do with where the rankings are going into conference play if you have a ton of teams ranked high like the Big East has in recent years. Once the Big East schools went at each other, they ended up with multiple losses but when “top teams” play each other somebody has to lose. If they are truly worthy of their ranking, you can’t default these teams from losing games since they lost to other top teams.

Another element the Big East has to make this work is having “punching bag” programs they could beat down on in conference, to give them a decent win/loss record. SOS can only take you so far, you still need to win some games. Teams like Seton Hall, Rutgers, Providence, South Florida and Depaul helped with this. Depaul for example went 1-17 in conference play.

What looks like a solid conference record in a “superior conference” is misleading with these wins factored in.

The bottom line is the media overrated these teams out of the gate and through their non conference weak schedule. For example, Louisville played no one and played all their games at home other than that long trip to Bowling Green and still found themselves moving up the rankings into the top 25 before conference play.

This doesn’t mean every Big East school was inflated. UCONN clearly deserved to be in the top 25 after dominating the Maui Classic and then proved their worth by winning the title. I can’t say the same for many of the other eight Big East programs who aligned themselves for an at large bid before conference play even began.

Part of the problem is those with the “votes” are giving programs votes for the talent they once had and not what they current have. An easy way to look at talent level is to look at who was drafted from what conference.

In 2009 the Big East had four 1st round picks and five 2nd round picks.

Compare this to the SEC in 2009 that had zero 1st round picks and three 2nd round picks.

Even factoring in that the Big East has four more teams which should equal a total of more picks, you can still tell the Big East talent level is higher than the SEC. Voters had a right to vote Big East schools up.
So at this point compared to the Big East, the SEC maybe was a “second rate” program as Pitino said.

Times are changing and those with the votes need to pay attention and stop the inflation of rankings based upon what was, instead of what is.

Look at last year’s draft board. In 2010 the Big East had four 1st round picks and seven 2nd round picks.

The SEC had five 1st round picks and two 2nd round picks.

Let’s say you give two points for first round picks and one point for 2nd round picks. With that formula the Big East had 4X2=8, 7X1=7, 8+7=15 points.

The SEC 5X2=10, 2X1=2, 10+2=12 points. When factoring in that Big East have four more schools this sounds about even. It would be very bias though to not point out the SEC’s five first round picks all came from the same school, Kentucky who was given a #1 seed. So there would be no reason to give other SEC schools more at large bids just because of what UK had.

So even with this, it is easy to still see an advantage in overall talent from the Big East once again. At this point they deserved more at large bids then other conferences.

This is where it ends though. Unfortunately the voters have taken this previous talent and allowed it to compromise their votes this past season.

This NBA draft has not occurred yet but looking at their results in the tournament and the mock draft, the Big East had no business receiving that many bids. The inflated pre-conference rankings robbed many more deserving programs of their at large bids.

Looking at the Mock draft for this year 2011 (source nbadraft.net)
The Big East has one 1st rounder (Kemba Walker from the one school who proved to be worthy of a top ten pre-conference ranking).
Then three 2nd round picks.

Using the same formula above we have 2X1=2, 3X1=3, this is a total of 5 points. Compare that to their previous year of 15 points, three times less talent in this year’s draft. Significantly less talent and yet the amount of at large bids not significant less, why?

The SEC has 4 1st round projected picks. Then four 2nd round projected picks.

This is 4X2=8, 4X1=4, 8+4=12 points. This is significantly higher than the Big East and definitely shows a higher level of overall talent and definitely not worthy of Pitino’s “second rate” line.

The voters need to take notice because this isn’t just a glitch. The Big East stock of talent is continuing to go down. Look at the current mock draft for 2012 (source nbadraft.net):

Big East with three projected 1st round picks and zero 2nd round picks.

3X2=6, 0X1=0, 6+0=6 total points.

Now look at the SEC. Eight, yes eight first round picks. Seven second round picks.

8X2=16, 7x1=7, 16+7=23 points.

23 points compared to 6 points.

The voters need to take notice that the talent in the Big East is just not there right now. Which means there shouldn’t be many programs receiving votes going into conference play, so let’s can this “well all that talent they just beat each other up” theory because it’s not the case at all anymore. The talent wasn’t there last year outside of UCONN and it won’t be there this year either.

This needs to be exposed and fixed or more teams more deserving of bids will be once again shorted.